SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes to develop and demonstrate a computational tool for detailed simulation of Rapid thermal processing (RTP) in a distributed computing environment. RTP has become a key technology in the fabrication of advanced semiconductor devices. As wafers get larger and chip dimensions smaller, the understanding of the highly coupled physics such as radiative heat transfer, transient fluid flow and heat transfer as well as chemical reactions through numerical modeling using high-performance computing is the key to the design, optimization, and control of RTP reactors. In Phase I, a novel radiation model will be developed to take into account surface radiation with any level of radiative complexity. The microscale radiative properties of patterned wafers will be predicted by a microscopic model. The transient fluid flow, heat transfer, and chemical reaction equations are then solved using an unstructured finite volume method. The main vehicle for parallelism is to use a Recursive Coordinate Bisection (RCM) method to decompose the computational domain into sub-domains, which are distributed among a network of computers. Message passing among the computers will be provided through the Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) library. The Phase I will demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed simulation tool on two-dimensional problems. In Phase II, the tool will be extended to consider some other physics and dynamic load balancing strategy on a network of computers will also be implemented. The proposed simulation tool will significantly benefit the semiconductor manufacturing equipment industries, which require a detailed understanding of multimode and highly coupled transport phenomena. The potential applications include the design, optimization, and control of RTP reactors and many other manufacturing and materials processing systems.manufacturer of nanophase materials, who sustains a strong and expanding market for products that will benefit from the proposed technology. As well as an internationally known, and well respected, expert researcher in the field of nanomaterials. The market for nanoparticle oxides spans the full spectrum of needs from consumer, medical, electronic, energy, environmental, chemistry, aerospace, defense and heavy industry. Existing commercial applications include catalysts, coatings, elastic ceramics, pigments, abrasives, cosmetics, electronic devices, magnetics, structural ceramics, and is growing.

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will continue to develop and demonstrate a computational tool for detailed simulation of Rapid thermal processing (RTP) in a distributed computing environment by taking advantages of the findings in Phase I. RTP has become a key technology in the fabrication of advanced semiconductor devices. As wafers get larger and chip dimensions smaller, the understanding of the highly coupled physics such as radiative heat transfer, transient fluid flow and heat transfer as well as chemical reactions through numerical modeling using high-performance computing is the key to the design, optimization, and control of RTP reactors. In Phase II, A 3D surface radiation model based on the modified discrete transfer method (MDTM) will be developed to treat radiative transfer in the lamphouse and process chamber as a whole process. The detailed pattern effects will be taken into account by rigorously solving time-domain Maxwell's equations through a finite volume approach. The rarefied gas dynamics in low pressure RTP will be modeled by adding Burnett terms into the Navier-Stokes equations. The governing equations that contain various multi-disciplinary physical models will be solved by a 3D unstructured finite volume method. To address computationally intensive 3D simulation needs, an efficient parallel strategy will be implemented in the solution procedure. Data communication among parallel processors will be conducted by the Message Passing Interface (MPI) library. To accelerate the overall solution convergence and improve the parallel performance, the algebraic multi-grid (AMG) method will be used to solve the discretized equations in each processor. It is expected that the proposed simulation tool can be used to systematically investigate the underlying physics occurring in RTP systems, and to help in the design, optimization, and control of RTP reactors. The proposed simulation tool will significantly benefit the semiconductor manufacturing equipment industries that require a detailed understanding of multimode and highly coupled transport phenomena. The potential applications include the design, optimization, and control of RTP reactors and many other manufacturing and materials processing systems.